G8 
K6T3 




ORATION 



DELIVERED AT 



PLYMOUTH, 



DECEMBER 21, 1895, 



THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND 
SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 



LANDINQ OF XHK PIIvGRIMS, 



GEORGE F. HOAR. 



Prbss of Rufus H, Darbv, 

Washington, D. C, 

1895. 




Qass_J_k^ 

Book— ^H^ 13 



r-i^yz 



ORATION 



DELIVERED AT 



PLYMOUTH, 



DECEMBER 21, 1895, 



THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND 
SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 



LANDING OF ^W& PII^GRIMS, 



GEORGE R HOAR. 



Press of Rufus H. Darbv, 
Washington, D. C, 

J895. 



^/^JT. 









•o 



ORATION. 



Surely that people is happy to whom 
the noblest story in history has come 
fiown through father and mother by 
the unbroken traditions of their own 
firesides If there be one thing more 
than anotlier for which we have to thank 
God on this anniversary, it is that the 
tale we have to tell is a familiar house- 
hold slory. The thoughts which are ap- 
propriate to the day are commonplaces. 
Every generation since the Pili;rim 
landed here has held his memory dear. 
The light of later days, thai has dispelled 
the intellectual darkness of his time, 
gives new luster and added nobility to his 
simple and reverend figure. 

So far as honor can be paid by the ut- 
terance of the lips, or by the tender affec 
lion of the heart, his descendants have 
never failed in what is due to the Pilgrim. 
The faults of other founders of States 
have not been forgotten. They have been 
kept alive in human memory, not only 
by the jealous criticism of men of other 
blood, but by the severe judgment of his- 
tory. The founder of Rome, the Norman 
Conqueror of England, the Spaniard in 
the South, the Cavalier of Jamestown, 
the settler of the far West — even the Pur- 
itan of Massachusetts — is known in his- 
tory quite as much by his faults, or by 
his crimes, as by his virtues. Puritan 
and Cavalier, Royalist and Roundhead 
may be terms of honor or terms of re- 
proach. But the word Pilgrim is every- 
where a word of tenderest association. 
There Is no blot on the memory of the 
Pilgrim of Plymouth. No word of re- 
proach is uttered when he is mentioned. 
The fame of the passenger of the May- 
flower is as pure and fragrant as its little 
namesake, sweetest of the flowers of 
spring. He is the stateliest figure in all 
history. He passes before \is like some 
holy shade seen in the Paradiso in tlie 
vision of Danie. 

Certainly you have not failed in dur 
honor to the Pilgrim's memory. You 
have given him, in every generation, of 
your best. No incense, no p igeant, no 
annual procession, no statue — though 
Phidias were the sculptor — no temple — 
though the dome were rounded by the 
hand of Angelo — can equal as a votive 
offering the imperishable oration of 



"Webster. It is the one best offering 
which could be laid on the Pilgrim's 
shrine. That majestic eloquence, if not 
equaled, has been worthily followed by the 
consummate grace of Everett, the more 
than oriental imagination of Choate, the 
stately dignity of Winthrop. Here, too, 
has stood Sumner — Sumnor of the white 
soul — to lay his wreath on the Pilirrims' 
altar in right of a marlj'r spirit, lofty and 
undaunted as their own. You may well 
believe that if a competition with tliese 
masters were expected to day, I might — as 
might any living man — shrink from the 
comparison. But it is not from human, 
it is not from living lips that you are ex- 
pecting the lesson of this occasion. You 
are here to listen to the voices of the 
dead; to meditate anew tlie eternal truths 
on wliich your fathers founded the State. 
This imperial people, if it is to bear rule 
over a continent, must listen to the voice 
of which David spake with dying lips — 
'' The Rock spake to me." 

You are here to hearken to the voice of 
the rock. 

The most precious earthly reward of a 
well spent life is the gratitude and love 
of children. Surely the Pilgrim has had 
that But he looked to no e irthlj' re 
ward, however precious. 

"They knew they were Pilgrims, and 
looked not much on those things, but 
lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dear- 
est country, and so quieted their spirits." 

How few of them there were. There 
were but forty eight men who landed 
upon the rock. But forty-one names 
ate signed to the compact. Of the twenty 
men who survived the first winter, there 
are, according to Dr. Palfrey's estimate, 
not more than eleven — one less than the 
n\unber of the Apostles — who are favor- 
ably known. The rest are either known 
unfavorably or only by name. Surely 
the parable of the mustard seed, than 
which, as Edward Everett said, "the 
burning pen of inspiration, ranging 
Heaven and Earth for a similitude, can 
I'm I nothing more appropriate or expres- 
.-.ive to which to liken the Kingdom of 
God." is repeated again. "Whereunto 
shall we liken it, or with what compari- 
son shall we compare it? 



"It is like a grain of mustard seed, 
which, when it is sown in the earth, is 
less than all the seeds that be in the earth. 

" But when It is sown it groweth up, 
and becometh greater than all herbs, and 
shooteth out great branches; so that the 
fowls of the air may lodge under the 
shadow of it." 

Though the heavens be rolled up as a 
scroll, this story is worthy to be written 
upon the scroll. Though the elements 
shall melt with fervent heat, this pure 
and holy flame shall shine brightly over 
the new heavens and the new earth. It 
is no story of what other countries have 
deemed great. There is no royal escutch- 
eon, no noble coat armor, no knightly 
shield. But they bore the whole armor 
of God, their loins girt about with truth, 
having the breastplate of righteousness; 
their feet shod with the preparation of 
the gospel of peace; taking the shield of 
faith and the helmet of salvation, and the 
sword of the spirit, which is the word of 
God. 

Let no man fancy that because they 
were few in cumber, these men were in- 
significant. You know the history of 
heroism better than that. It is Leonidas 
with his three hundred, and not Xerxes 
with his ships by thousands, and men in 
nations, that has given the inspiration to 
mankind for two thousand years. There 
fell of the English side, at Agincourt, but 
twenty- nine persons — 
Edward, the duke of York, the ear' of Suffolk, 
Sir Richard Ketley, Davy Gam, esquire ; 
None else of name ; and oi all other men. 
But five and twenty. 

But somehow Davy Gam, esquire, has 
hovered over the English lines on a hun- 
dred fields of victory, from Cressy to 
Quebec, from Quebec to Waterloo. '* Cest 
toujours le meme chose," said Napoleon 
when he yielded himself prisoner. That 
spirit came ashore at Plymouth. It cross- 
ed the ocean to abide. It takes no ac- 
count of numbers and needs no numbers 
for its victories. 

O God, Thy arm was here, 
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone. 
Ascribe we all. Take it, God, 
For it is only Thine. 

Miles Slandish, whom an accomplished 
descendant well calls the Greatheart of 
the Pilgrims, with his little army of four- 
teen men, inspired with this spirit, was a 
power mightier than all the hosts of Xer- 
xes. They fought for a stake more pre- 
cious than that of Marathon or "Waterloo, 
as Christian freedom is of higher value 
than Grecian civilization, or than the em- 
pire of Europe. The court was of a dig- 
nity that no Areopagus could equal. The 
little Senate consisted of but nine men. 
But if "as making laws under the first 



written Republican constitution, which 
held in itself the fate of all others. 

I wish to speak of the men who landed 
on Plymouth Rock on the day whose an- 
niveisary we celebrate ; — of what they 
were, what they brought with them, of 
the republic they founded, what they left 
to their posterity that now remains, and 
what is hereafter to abide. Other contri- 
butions, wliether for good or evil, to that 
composite life and character which we 
call America, will not lack due consider- 
ation elsewhere. Some of them were 
made in the very beginning, at James- 
town, at Salem, at New York, at Balti- 
more, under the spreading elm at Phila- 
delphia. Others are of later time. Some 
of them have come in our own time, from 
Ireland, from England, from (Germany, 
from Canada, and from that Northern 
hive whose swarm first brought the honey 
of freedom to the island of our ancestors. 
They have not lacked, and will never 
lack, due honor. But it is to this one 
alone that this day belongs. The topic 
may perhaps seem narrow and local. It 
may be said of the Pilgrim quality what 
your admirable chronicler, Mr. Russell, 
says of the Mayflower: " A pleasing fic- 
tion obtains with some good people here- 
abouts, viz., That this little flower is pe- 
culiar to this section of the country." 
But to me, looking forward as best I can 
into the future and seeing how they have 
already leavened this nation of ours, the 
subject seems sometimes as large and 
broad as if I were to undertake to speak 
of the consequences of the creation of 
Adam and Eve. 

The commonwealths which were united 
in 1692 and became the province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay are still blended in the popu- 
lar conception. Their founders are sup- 
posed to have the same general cliarac- 
teristics, and are known to the rest of the 
world by the common title of New Eng- 
land Puritans. I suppose this belief pre- 
vails even in New England, except as to 
a small circle of scholars and the de- 
scendants of the Pilgrims who still dwell 
in the Old Colony, and who have studied 
personally the history of their ancestors. 
Many of our historians have treated the 
two with little distinction, except that the 
suffering of the Pilgrim, the dangerous 
and romantic voyage of the Mayflower, 
the story of the landing in December and 
the hardship of the first winter have 
made, of course, a series of pictures of 
their own. Even Mr. Webster, after 
narrating as could have been done by no 
other chronicler who ever lived, these 
picturesque incidents, proceeds in his 
oration of 1820 to discuss the principles 
which lay at the foundation of the Puri- 



tan State, and which were, in the main, 
common to both communities. 

Yet the dwellers of Plymouth know 
well the diflference between the Pilgrim 
that landed here and the Puritan that 
settled in Salem and Boston. The differ- 
ence was as great as would have been if 
the members of the established church 
had been driven into exile, and one colo 
ny founded by Jeremy Taylor, or George 
Herbert, and one founded by Bancroft or 
Laud. If the anti slavery men of our 
later day had shaken the dust off their 
feet against the Constitution and the 
Union, and gone to some unoccupied 
island in some remote and barbarous 
archipelago, the difference would scarce- 
ly have been greater between a colony 
founded by Waldo Emerson, or Samuel 
May, and one founded by Garrison or 
Parker Pillsbury.or Stephen Foster, than 
that between tlie men of Plymouth and 
the men of Salem. Both were Englisli- 
men. Both were, as they understood it, 
Calvinists. Both desired freedom. They 
had the tie of a common feeling, of a 
common persecution, of a common faith, 
and of a common hope. I wish I could 
add, descendant as I am of theMassachu 
chusetts Puritans in every line of descent 
that I can trace since the time when the 
name was first heard, the tie of a common 
and equal charity. 

The compact on board the Mayflower 
was the beginning of a State. Another 
State was begun at Salem by the company 
who came over with Eudicott. There 
were marked resemblances in the quality 
of these two communities, as would be 
expected from the similarity of their ori- 
gin. There were likewise marked differ- 
ences, as would be expected from the in 
dividual character of the men who most 
largely influenced them. There were 
doubtless men in the Puritan state pene- 
trated by the Pilgrim's spirit. John Win- 
throp himself, the foremost single figure 
in the Massachusetts colony, would have 
been in all respects a loving companion 
to Bradford, and a loving disciple to Rob- 
inson. But it must, I think, be admitted 
that while Bradford was an example and 
representative of the prevalent spirit of 
Plymouth— a spirit that finds its expres- 
sion in the teaching of Robinson — Win- 
throp was a restraint and a repression of 
the intolerance of the Massachusetts col- 
ony. 

Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, author of 
the Body of Liberties, whicii, though it 
was never printed till within the memory 
of some of us, served, practically, as 
Constitution and Bill of Rights to Massa 
chusetts until 1684, if not until 1780, 
says in the Simple Cobbler of Aga- 



wam: "It is said men ought to have 
liberty of conscience, aad that it is perse- 
cution to debar them from it. I caa 
rather stand amazed than reply to this. 
It is an astonishment to think that the 
brains of men should be parboiled in 
such impious ignorance. No practical 
sin is so sinful as some error of judg- 
ment; no man so accursed with indelible 
infamy and dedolent impenitency as au- 
thors of heresies." 

Now compare this with the farewell 
counsel of John Robinson, reported by 
Winsiow: "We are, ere long, to part 
asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether 
ever he should live to see our face again. 
But whether the Lord had appointed it 
or not, he charged us before God and His 
blessed angels, to follow him no further 
than he followed Christ; and if God 
should reveal anything to us by any other 
instrument of His, to be as ready to re 
ceive it as we were to receive any truth 
by his ministry; for he was very confi- 
dent the Lord had more truth and light 
yet to break forth out of His Holy Word. " 

This is the Pilgrim's declaration and, 
if we do not read the world's history 
amiss, the world's declaration of religious 
independence. Let it stand forever by 
the side of the immortal opening sen- 
tences of the Declaration at Philadel- 
phia. They are twin stars, ever shining 
in the great constellation of the Northern 
sky, pointing to that etenial Polar star of 
truth which hath no fellow in the firma 
ment. 

There were beautiful and pure souls in 
the Puritan State, for whose translation 
into the blessed society of the immortals 
there seemed nothing of a gross mor- 
tality to be pruned away. Winthroo is 
still our foremost example of a Christian 
ruler, till the coming of Washington. 
The second John Winthrop was a worthy 
son of such a father. The claim of his 
accomplished descendant that no purer 
or nobler or lovelier character can be 
found in the history of Connecticut, 
whether among Governors or among 
governed, than that of the younger Win- 
throp, may safely be enlarged to include 
any State that ever existed. The Win- 
throps were Christian gentlemen, fit for 
the companionship of Bradford and 
Brewster, and there can be no higher 
praise. There were, as you know, evil 
men in the company of Pilgrims. But 
still, the character of the Pilgrim finds 
its perfect portraiture in Bradford's ex- 
quisite phrase — " God's free people " ; 
while the word Puritan calls up to the 
imagination a sterner, harsher, earthllar 
image. Blackstone said, " I came from 
England to escape the Lord Bishopd ; 



and I cannot join with you because I 
would not be under the Lord Brethren." 
The Puritan brought with him to Salem 
much of the spirit which had driven him 
from England. His experience had been 
an experience of persecutions. What 
Milton calls the "fury of the Bishops" 
was still raging. Severity applied to 
men of English blood begets severity and 
defiance. 

" What wonder if in noble heal, 
' Those men thine arms withstood, 

Betaught the lesson thou hadst taught, 
And in thj' spirit with thee fought, 
Who were of English blood." 

There was a yearning for Christian 
unity botli by Puritan and Pilgrim. The 
leaders of both Colonies were English 
gentlemen. They were attached by many 
tender ties to the Church of England. 
The farewell letter to the Massachusetts 
Company, which Mr. Winthrop thinks 
was written by his ancestor, is a cry of 
the heart. The love for that dear Mother, 
the Church of England, " from whence 
we rise, ever acknowledging that such 
hope and part as we have obtained in the 
common salvation, we have received in 
her bosom and sucked it from her breasts," 
was stirring in the bosom of John Robin- 
son also. Doubtless if the persecution 
had ceased, the division would have 
ceased. Edward Winslow says: "The 
foundation of our New England planta- 
tions was not Scliisme, division or separa- 
tion, but upon love, peace and holinesse ; 
yea, such love and mutual care of the 
church of Leyden, for the spreading of 
the Gospel, the welfare of each other, 
and their prosperities to succeeding gene- 
rations, as is seldom found on earth." 

The Puritan had a capacity for an hon- 
est, hearty hatred, of which I find no 
trace in Pilgrim literature. Indeed a 
personal devil must have been a great 
comfort to our Massachusetts ancestors, 
as furnisliing an object which they could 
hate with all their might, without viola- 
tion of Christian principles. 

The experience of the Pilgrim at Ley- 
den had been an experience of peace. 
There was much in Holland to shock the 
strictness of our Fathers. They viewed, 
undoubtedly with great disfavor, the 
thought that they or their children should 
be blended with either the political or the 
religious life of Holland. But they were 
received at Leyden w^ith an abundant 
welcome and hospitality. Among the 
most valuable lessons which trained them 
for the founding of their State, are the 
lessons learned under Holland. The 
softening and liberalizing influence of 
those eleven years on Robinson himself 
is clearly to be discerned. 



Massachusetts united Church and State 
in the beginning, admitting none but 
freemen to be Church members. Church 
and State were always separate in Ply- 
mouth. There was never any "soul 
liberty " advocated or vindicated by 
Roger Williams that did not exist at Ply- 
mouth. Certainly, he did not leave Ply- 
mouth on compulsion. " That great and 
pious soul, Mr. Winslow," he says, 
"melted and kindly visited me, and put 
a purse of gold into the hands of my 
wife for our supply." 

There is no danger that we shall ever 
forget what the children of the Puritans 
have to say in reply. They had to pre- 
serve their State from danger within and 
without, from foe spiritual and from foe 
temporal. The little company, with the 
Atlantic on one hand, their only wall of 
defence against tlie liatred of King and 
Prelate, and the forest, home of the sav- 
age and the wild beast on the other ; it 
was like a forlorn hope, it was like a for- 
lorn hope of au army on a night march, 
to which even an uncautioiis whisper 
might be ruin. We do not forget, too, 
that the Puritan's intolerance and super 
stition were, with the single exception 
of his brother at Plymouth, the intoler- 
ance and superstition of all mankind ; 
and that, with the single exception of his 
brother at Plymouth, he was the first of 
all mankind to cast them off, Puritan- 
ism is a character, a force, and not a 
creed. Let others, if they like, trace 
their lineage to Norman Pirate or to Rob- 
ber Baron. The children of the Puritan 
are not ashamed of him. The Puritan 
as a distinct, vital and predominant 
power, lived less than a century in 
England. He appeared early in the 
reign of Elizabeth, who came to the 
throne in 1558, and departed at the restora- 
tion of Charles II, in 1660. But in that 
brief lime he was the preserver, aye, lie 
was the creator of English freedom. By 
the confession of the historians who most 
dislike him, it is due to him that there is 
an English Constitution. He created the 
modern House of Commons. That House, 
when he took his seat in it, was the feeble 
and timid instrument of despotism. 
When he left it, it was what it has ever 
since been, the strongest, freest, most 
venerable legislative body the world had 
ever seen. When he took his seat in it, 
it was little more than the register of the 
King's command. When he left it, it 
was the main depository of the national 
dignity and the national will. King and 
Minister and Prelate, who stood in his 
way, he brought to the bar and to the 
block. In that brief but crowded century 
he made the name of Englishman the 



highest title of honor upon the earth. A 
great liistorian has said, "The dread of 
his invincible army was on all tlieinhabi- 
tantsof the Island." He placed the name 
of John Milton hiiiii on the illustrious 
roll of the great poets of tbe world, and 
the name of Oliver Cromwell hitihest on 
the roll of English sovereinns. The his- 
torian might liave added that the dread 
of this invincible leader was on all the 
inhabitants of Europe. Puritanism 
crossed the sea with Winthrop. It planted 
Massachusetts and Connecticut. It fought 
thewar of the rebellion. The spirit of 
Eni,dish Puritanism was transformed into 
the spirit of American liberty. Tiie 
saviour of the English Conslilution was 
the creatorlof the Constitutions of America, 
and, in a later day, was their saviour 
also. It put down the rebellion. It 
abolished slavery. It kept the National 
faith. In spite of the other elements — 
Scandinavian, German', Italian, Celt, that 
are blending with our national life, under 
our free hospitality, it was never, in my 
judgment, more powerful than at this 
hour. 

The children of the Puritan are willing 
to accept any challenge to a discussion of 
his character and his title to the respect 
of mankind, from any antagonist, east 
or west, north or south, at home or 
abroad, from prelate or from conventicle, 
from churchman or from infidel, from 
foreigner or from degenerate offspring. 
There are some modern revilers of the 
Massachusetts Puritans, who have sprung 
from Puritan loins. I should like to ask 
them what thej'^ make of the single fact 
of the founding of Harvard College. 
But one of the highest titles of Plymouth 
to honor is the fact, that, as the two com- 
'munities became blended, the spirit of the 
Puritan was subdued and softened by the 
spirit of the Pilgrim. 

I am not unmindful that there is one 
high authority for an opinion which, if 
accepted, would deprive John Robinson of 
his highest glory and would even rob the 
event we celebrate of much of its splen 
dor. Dr. Dexter, the historian, the 
champion, the lover of New England 
Congregationalism, thinks that John 
Robinson was speaking of Church govern- 
ment only, and did not mean to say that 
there was to be expected from the word of 
God any further light on the essentials of 
Christian doctrine or of saving faith. 

Every student of the great things of 
American history, every son, every lover 
of the Pilgrim, must cheri.shthe memory 
of Henry M. Dexter. The occasion 
should not pass without a word of honor 
for his name. What we know of the life 
of the Fathers at Leyden, and what we 



know of their origin in England, is due 
to him, I am not sure but more than to all 
other investigators put together. It if 
not surprising that this born champio»- 
and combatant should have refused to 
concede, even to the authority of John 
Robinson, that the faith to which he was 
born and bred did not contain, as ex- 
pressed in its venerable formulae, the 
whole counsel of God. The learned 
doctor says: " I conceive it to be quite 
impossible for any candid person to read 
carefully Robinson's defence of the doc- 
trine propounded by the Synod at Dort, 
without reaching the conclusion that the 
Leyden Pastor was in entire agreement 
Avith the Synod, not merely in the articles 
of faith which it has formulated, but in 
that animus of infallibility and inexposure 
to essential future modification, in which 
it held them." I have read the volume 
carefully and with so much of candor as 
God has vouchsafed to me. While, un- 
doubtedly, it affirms and most vigorously 
defends that Calvinistic faith wiiicli the 
writer, and the men of his congregation, 
held, and which the Fathers brought 
with them to Plymouth, the faith which 
has wrought for so many ages such 
wonders for humanity, a faith which has 
lieen held dear by so many martyrs of 
liberty, and so maiay of the great builders, 
in the old times, and in the new, who 
have builded States in Christian liberty 
and law, the faith of the founders of Re - 
publics in Switzerland, in Holland, in 
England, in New England, yet I can find 
in that great argument no animus of in- 
fallibility, and no claim that the light 
which is to break forth from the w.)rd 
hereafter may not illuminate them also, 
and that it will not penetrate the great 
temple of Christian doctrine instead of 
being stayed in the porches and ap- 
proaches. The preface to the defence of 
the Synod at Dort itself to my apprehen- 
sion, states ascieai'ly, if not as eloquently 
or tersely, the doctrine of the farewell 
address. Speaking of the substance of 
faith and the very essence of salvation, 
he rebukes his antagonists for thinking 
that they have seen the whole of God's 
truth. "It is true we ought not," he 
says, "to look on our things alone, as if 
we alone had knowledge, and conscience, 
and zeal, and souls to save: 'but every 
man also on the things of others,' though 
in some things differing from them, as 
having these things, as well as we: and 
therewith considering, that many eyes 
see more than one, and that specially 
having, as so many spectacles, the advan- 
tages of knowledge of tongues, and arts, 
with daily travail in the scripture, which 
in us are wanting. And thus serving 



Qod, in all modesty of miad, and being 
sincere in the truth In love, we shall be 
much fitter, both to help others, and to 
be helped by them In the things agree- 
able thereunto." 

In these words John Robinson sounds 
the keynote of his distinctively theolo- 
gical treatise, which he put to press in 
1624, four years after the departure of 
the Pilgrims and only a year before his 
death. He was speaking not of Church 
government or ritual or form, or cere- 
monial, but of predestination, of elec- 
tion, of the law of conscience, of the fall 
of Adam and God's foreknowledge and 
truthfulness, of original sin, of baptism, of 
the covenant with Abraham and of a new 
and better covenant, of the five points of 
Calvinism, of the Declaration of the 
Synod, a declaration made by men who 
differed essentially, in ritual and church 
government, from him and from each 
other. And it is of these that he de- 
clares that we are not to look, not to 
think on our things alone, as if we alone 
had knowledge, but every man also of 
the things of others, aa having eyes to 
see as well as we, and advantages of 
knowledge of tongues and arts, with 
daily travail in the scripture, " which in 
us arc wanting," and calls upon his people 
"to serve God in all modesty of mind, 
and so to be fitter both to help others 
and to be helped by them." 

Dr. Dexter well says, " We have too 
much judged the Puritans, and too much 
allowed the world to judge them, in the 
light of our generation instead of the 
light of their own; forgetting and help- 
ing others to forget out of what a horror 
of thick darkness they were scarcely 
more than commencing to emerge." It 
is the glory of John Robinson that he was 
conscious of the darkness of his time, for, 
"saith he." as Winslow reports, "it is 
not possible the Christian world can come 
80 lately out of such thick anti-Christian 
darkness, and that full perfection of 
knowledge should break forth at once." 

The sublime utterance of John Robin- 
son would become not only tame but petty 
and ludicrous and ridiculous, if we were 
to add to it any phraseology which would 
limit its meaning, in accordance with Dr. 
Dexter's suggestion, 

John Robinson would have dreaded 
nothing more than to have led any weak 
brother astray. If he could but have 
seen in that prophetic vision into which 
his soul was lifted and wrapt in the 
mingled agony and joy of the day of 
parting at Delft Haven, how countless 
generations dwelling in and ruling a con- 
tinent larger than Europe would hearken 
to the lofty music of that utterance, how 



they would rejoice in it as itself the au- 
roral light of the new day that was to 
break forth from the word of God, he 
would, if Dr. Dexter be right, have has- 
tened to add: 

"Mistake me not, my brethren dearly 
beloved. This relateth only to the fashion 
of vestments; to the posture of the body 
in prayer; to the authority of eldera, and 
the virtue conveyed by the imposition of 
hands. The horror of thick darkness, 
through which the world hath passed, 
and is yet passing, still givelh ligtit 
enough for everything beside. In all es- 
sential things, the whole counsel of God, 
though unknown to Abraham and the 
Fathers, to Moses and the Prophets, to 
all mankind before the Saviour's coming, 
and to the vast majority of mankind ever 
since, is fully known to me and to the 
Synod at Dort. No modesty of mind 
leadeth me to think I can be helped by 
others, or that the advantages of knowl- 
edge of tongues and arts, with daily 
travail in the scripture, which in us are 
wanting, availeth aught in these things." 

It is no rash conjecture that the first 
spirit whose pure companionship our ex- 
cellent Dexter would have sought in the 
realm where he has gone, was the spirit 
of John Robinson. He would have already 
learned his mistake before their meeting. 
As Beatrice said to Dante of Saint Greg- 
ory— 

" Wherefore, as soon as lie unclosed his eyes. 
Within this heaven, be at himself didsDoile." 

Dr. Thomas Fuller, whose wit has pre- 
vented his getting the credit due to his 
profound wisdom, was born in 1608, with- 
in a mile of Robert Browne and not far 
from the cradle of the Pilgrims at Scrooby 
and Austerfleld. He was a clear eyed 
and not unsympathetic observer. He 
says of the Pilgrims in his Church His- 
tory: 

"They laid down two grand ground- 
works on which their following fabric is 
to be erected : 

" First. Only to take what was held 
forth in God's word, leaving nothing to 
Church practice or human prudence, as 
but the iron legs and clay toes of that 
statue whose whole hand and body ought 
to be pure gold; 

"Second. Because one day teacheth 
another, they will not be tied on Tuesday 
morning to maintain their tenets of Mon- 
day night, if a new discovery intervene." 

Holland, as the researches of recent 
writers have shown, exercised a large in- 
fluence on civil and religious liberty in 
England. The traces of this influence 
appear in the Puritan commonwealth. 
All the Protestant Reformers in Europe 



who Kjitcted Episcopal uuiUoriiy cuuali- 
tuted oae brotherbocnl, and hud a large 
iofluence od eacli other. All of them re- 
garded HoUaad as their champion and 
defender. But the Pilgrims of Plymouth 
bore to Holland a relation borne by no 
other. She had been for 13 years their 
sanctuary, their home, their school, their 
university. 

Governor Bradford says, " They re- 
solved to goe into the low countries where 
there was freedom of religion for all 
men." The Pilgrim brought from Hoi 
land an experience of freedom, civil and 
religious, then unknown elsewhere on the 
face of the earth. Schiller said, " Every 
injury inflicted by a tyrant gave a i ighl of 
citizenship in Holland." 

The church of the Pilgrim had its di 
rect connection with Christ. There was 
no human link between. If He were not 
its rock, it had no foundation. If He were 
not its Father, it had no paternity. If He 
were not its support, it had no strength. 
If He were not its root, it was not planted 
in the soil. The church planted at Scroo 
by and Austerfleld, rooted at Leyden, 
transplanted to Plymouth, was a band of 
Christians independent of any earthly 
power, as direct an emanation from the 
spirit of Christ as the church first formed 
at Antioch. There were but two places 
on earth at that day where such a church 
could abide. One was Holland and the 
other the unbroken wilderness of Amer- 
ica. Robinson's definition of a church is 
this : "A company consisting though of 
but two or three, separated from the world 
whether unchristian or anti christian, 
gathered unto the name of Christ by a 
covenant made to work in all ways of God 
known to them, is a church, and so hath 
the whole power of Christ." 

I do not know that there is any discus 
sion of the principles of civil liberty in 
Pilgrim littrature. They make no com- 
plaint of merely political oppression. 
Their enemy was the hierarchy. Their 
tyrant was the law which enforced con- 
formity. But they were ready for self- 
government. During the first twelve 
years they exercised all those functions 
of government which are now performed 
in towns, counties and commonwealths. 

The Pilgrim had seen in Holland the 
best example ever seen in his time or be- 
fore of municipal Republican govern- 
ment. The compact signed on board the 
Mayflower was the necessary and natural 
result of what he had learned in the Low 
Countries. 

So far as I know there is no allusion to 
political freedom from the lips or the pen 
of any of the foundera of Plymouth. The 
compact begins with a declaration that 



they " are the loyal subjects of our dread 
Sovereign, Lord King James, by the Grace 
of God, of Great Britain and France and 
Ireland — King, defender of the faith," 
etc., and that they have undertaken their 
voyage for the glory of God and the ad- 
vancement of the Christian faith, and 
honor of their King and country. And 
yet the present necessity led them to make 
what has been called the original social 
compact, in the form of as pure a Repub- 
lic as was ever known on earth before or 
since. Indeed the doctrine on which the 
Revolution was fought afterward, of ab- 
solute independence of the British Par- 
liament, is clearly implied from their 
original constitution. In De Rassiere's 
exceedingly spirited letter describing 
Plymouth, in the 7th year after the 
landing, is the whole statement of the 
contention of our Revolutionary fathers 
in one pregnant sentence, " Whereby 
they have their freedom without ren- 
dering an account to anyone, only if 
the King should choose to send a Gov- 
ernor-General they would be obliged to 
acknowledge him as Sovereign Chief." 
On the other hand, the Puritans of Mass- 
achusetts were impelled to their emigra- 
tion largely by the thirst for political 
freedom. They dreaded schism. Yet 
they were speedily compelled to sever the 
tie with the established Church, that 
Mother to whom Winthrop and Higgin- 
sou had uttered their despairing and lov- 
ing cry. When religious libeity set her 
foot on the rock at Plymouth, her insep- 
arable sister, political freedom, came with 
her. And when political liberty landed 
at Salem, there could be no long separa- 
tion. The other sisteriustantly followed. 

The Puritan, it is true, was a religious 
enthusiast. But it is also true that his 
history belongs to the political and not to 
the religious history of the race. His 
work was the defence of civil liberty, the 
framing of constitutions and statutes, re- 
sistance to tyrants, diplomacy, conquest, 
the stern conflict and the stern triumph 
of battle. The founders of Massachu- 
setts, and the men with whom they took 
counsel and agreed, were busy, sagacious, 
influential, and active politicians, intent 
on political reforms in England and on 
carrying out their principles in both 
countries 

The influence of the Pilgrim is a spirit- 
ual influence. His soul thirsted for God, 
for the living God. Civil liberty came to 
him as an incident. 

Mr. Webster says that although many 
of them were Republicans in principle, 
we have no evidence that our New Eug 
land ancestors would have emigrated 
merely from their dislike of the political 



10 



system of Europe. "They fled not so 
much from English Government as from 
the hierarchy and the laws which en- 
forced confoimity to its establishment." 
He adds that loleraiion was a virtue be- 
yond the coucepliou of Queen Elizabeth, 
and beyond her fige and that of her suc- 
cessor. Both these statements are doubt 
less true. But the Pilgrim Fathers brought 
with them the desire for absolute civil 
and religious liberty for themselves, and 
they brought with them an absolute pur 
pose to conform to the will of God as de- 
clared in the scriptures and as interpreted 
by the individual conscience. Especially 
they brought with them the Golden Rule. 
The logical consequence of these two 
principles, taken together, must be inevi- 
tably the establishment of a perfect civil 
and religious liberty. 

The Pilgrim had none of the Puritan's 
harshness, intolerance or religious big- 
otry. He was like him in the absolute 
submission of his own will to the will of 
the Creator, both in personal conduct and 
the conduct of the State, in deeming this 
world as of little account but in its rela- 
tion to another. 

The Pilgrim had the Puritan's faith in 
a personal immortality and in a living 
God. Like the Puritan, he demanded 
absolute obedience to the voice of con- 
science in the soul. 

He was like the Puritan in believing in 
a future life where just men were to enjoy 
immortality with those whom they had 
loved here; 

He was like the Puritan in that he was 
comforted and supported by that belief 
in every sorrow and suffering which he 
encountered; 

He was like the Puritan also in believ- 
ing in the coming of God's Kingdom in 
this world, and that the State he had 
builded was to abide and to grow, a com- 
munity dwelling together in the practice 
of virtue, in the worship of God, in the 
pursuit of truth. 

There was no church membership, as in 
Massachusetts, required in Plymouth for 
political franchise. They had nothousht 
of Republicanism till the compact. But 
they learned to think of Republican gov- 
ernment, without being startled, from 
their brethren who had been at Geneva, 
and chietiy from their own sojourn in 
Holland 

The Pilgrims had seen in Holland the 
oldest and best system of common schools 
in Europe. Indeed their answer to the 
charges sent from London in 1622 gives 
ample evidence that from the very begin- 
ning they deemed universal education a 
necessary of life. 

Thev had seen in Holland the constant 



reading of the Bible in all households. 
There had been twenty-four editions of 
the New Testament and tifteeu of the 
Bible printed in the vernacular before 
they left Leyden. 

They had lived under the shadow of 
the foremost unversity in Europe, which 
had set them an example of a large liber- 
ality, to which Oxford was a stranger till 
nearly 250 years afterward. 

They had seen a people living under a 
written constitution, expounded by an 
independent judiciary. 

They liad seen, and Brewster had 
wielded, the strength of that irresistible 
engine, a free press. 

They had seen the practical working 
of that equal division of inheritance 
among all the children, of which Mr. 
Webster said here, "Republican govern- 
ment must inevitably be the result." 

They had learned in Holland the im- 
portance and convenience of a public 
registration of deeds. 

They had seen the security to individ 
ual freedom of a written ballot. 

All tliese things America owes to the 
Pilgrim of Plymouth, and the Pilgrim of 
Plymouth owes them to Holland. 

Tliere landed on P.ymouth Rock on 
the 21st day of December, 1621: 

a State, free-born and full grown, ex ■ 
ercising all local, municipal and national 
functions through the voice of the whole 
people, in simple democratic majesty; 

ready, as its bounds grew and its indi- 
vidual communities multiplied, for the 
mechanism of a perfect representative 
government; 

an independent Church, having a di- 
rect connection with Christ, as did the 
Church in the beginning, without human 
link or mediation; 

a people mild both in government 
and private conduct, tolerant, peaceful, 
affectionate, lovers of home, of kindred 
and friends, apt for social delights, fond 
of sound learning and the refinements of 
domestic life, without the greed of gain 
or the lust of conquest; 

but possessing a rare public spirit, 
and the high courage and aptness for 
command ami for success which belong 
to the English race; 

made up of gentlemen and gentle- 
women to whom refinement, education, 
learning, and a noble behavior were ne- 
cessities of their nature; 

accustomed to toil, privation and hard- 
ship; 

observing the operation of a written 
ballot, 

and of a public registration of deed.s, 

and an equal distribution of inherit- 
ance among the children. 



11 



This iiulc Slate )iad existed lor 7;i 
years. It enacted the mildest code of 
laws on the face of the earth. There 
were but eight capital offences in 
Plymouth. There were thirty one in 
England at the end of the reign of Eliza 
beth. Sir James Mackintosh held in his 
band a list of two hundred and twenty- 
three wtien he addressed the House of 
Commons at the beginning of the pres- 
ent century. They established trial by 
jury. They treated the Indians with jus- 
tice and good faith, setting an example 
wliich Vattel, the foremost writer on the 
law of nations, commends to mankind. 
Their good sense kept them free from the 
witchcraft delusions. They were not un- 
prepared for aspiri ted self-defence, as wit- 
ness Miles Standish's answer to the chal- 
lenge of the Narragansett, and his stern 
summary justice at Weymouth. They 
held no foot of land not fairly obtained 
by honest purchase. No witch was ever 
hung there. In their earlier days their 
tolerance was an example to Roger Wil- 
liams himself. He has left on record his 
gratitude for the generous friendship of 
Winslow. Gov. Bradford's courtesy en- 
tertained the Catholic Priest, who was 
bis guest, with a fish dinner on Friday. 
If, like Roger Williams himself, they 
failed somewhat, as in the case of the 
Quakers, in the practical application of 
a principle for which the world was not 
ready, their practice and their principles 
soon came to be in accord. When we re- 
member that our Baptist friends wanted 
the term "damnable heretics" to include 
Unitarians and to have them banished, 
that within a year from the beginning 
of the Revolution New York shut out 
Catholic Priests from her limits under 
the penalty of death, and that in Mary- 
land it was a capital crime to be a 
Unitarian as late as 1770, you will 
hardly care te devote much space to this 
blemish on tlie Fathers of Plymouth. 
And when at last, in 1692, Plymouth was 
blended with Massachusetts, the days of 
bigotry and intolerance and superstition, 
as a controlling force in Massachusetts, 
were over. 

The past ia not secure unless it be fol- 
lowed by a worthy future. The Pilgrim 
will fail unless his posterity be fit to 
keep his fame. Has the experience of 
two hundred and seventy-five years 
strengthened or weakened the influence 
of the Pilgrim's character, or the power 
in human history of the faith, the prin- 
ciples, and the institutions which he 
brought with him when he landed upon 
the rock? Do they vindicate their 
authority in personal conduct, and the 
conduct of the States? Are they stronger 



or weaker now tban then? How far have 
we kept the faith of the Fathers? Are 
we to transmit it unimpaired to our chil 
dren ? What have we of rational hope 
that our children will transmit it in turn 
unimpaired to their heirs? It is well, 1 
think, that at no infrequent periods this 
account should be taken. 

Are the devout religious faith, obedi 
ence to the voice of conscience in the sou! 
as a guide to the individual and the State, 
civil liberty, civil government, liberty iu 
religion, the quality of the English race, 
and the free institutions brought by the 
Fathers from England and Holland and 
established here, blended and in harmony 
in the character of a great people, living 
and strong to-day as they were in the first 
generation? Do we leave them unini 
paired to our children? Are they to 
abide ? 

One thing we must not fail to observe. 
It is quite clear that when we cansider 
the elements I haveimperlectlydescril)ed, 
which gave the Pilgrim Slate its dis- 
tinctive character, that no one of them 
could be spared, if that distinctive charac 
ter is to be maintained. Probably as 
bright examples of each could be found 
elsewhere. It is the fact that these shin- 
ing qualities were united and blended 
in the Pilgrim that gives him his dis- 
tinction. 

The Pilgrim was possessed by an in- 
tense religious faith, and for it he was 
ready to encounter suffering and death. 
But there are plenty of examples in his- 
tory of a religious faith as intense, to 
which its votaries have been ready to 
make as absolute a surrender of self, 
which the Pilgrim would have accounted 
as a gross superstition. Gerald, the assas- 
sin of William the Silent, was as sure he 
was doing the will of God as was his 
victim, lie met his death and the terri- 
ble torture which preceded it with a 
courage as undaunted as that of any hero 
in history. He fortified himself for his 
crime by reading the Bible, by fastinLV 
and prayer, and then, full of religious 
exaltation, dreaming of angels and of 
Paradise, he departed for Delft, and com- 
pleted his duly as a good Catholic and 
faithful subject. When his judges ques- 
tioned him, when they condemned him 
to have his hand enclosed in a tube, 
seared with a red hot iron, to have his 
arms and legs and thighs torn to pieces 
with burning pincers, his heart to be 
torn out and thrown into his face, his 
head to be dissevered from his trunk and 
placed on a pike, his body to be cut into 
four pieces, and every piece to be hung 
on a gibbet over one of the principal 
gates of the city, he showed no sign of 



12 



terrov, no sorrow, or surprise. Fixing 
his dauntless eye on his judges, he 
repeated with steady voice liis customary 
words, " Ecce homo! " 

The Moslem, the Indian, the Hindoo 
meet torture and deatli with a courage as 
dauntless as that of the Pilgrim 

The subjection of the individual will 
to the law of duty, whether in personal 
conduct or the conduct of states, is as 
manifest in tbe Spartan as in the Puritan, 
and has had many examples since the 
day when tlie epitaph of the 300 was 
inscribed at Thermopylae : 

Stranger ! tell it to Lacedaemon, 

That we lie here in obedience to her laws. 

The love of freedom appears and has 
burned brightly in the bosoms of men of 
all races and of ail ages. We have no 
right to make a claim for the Pilgrim 
which we cannot allow to the Athenian 
or the Swiss, or the Swede, or the 
Scotsman. 

The institutions which the Pilgrim 
brought from Holland, he left in Holland. 

The institutions lie brought from 
England, lie left in England. 

The English aptness for command and 
habit of success, indomitable courage, 
unconquerable perseverance belonged to 
this race before the movement for reli 
gious freedom, and exist in the English 
race to-day wherever it is found. 

The English language and literature 
are possessions shared by the whole 
English-speaking race. Yet the Dutch 
or the Swedish or the Scotch character- 
istics differ widely from those of the 
men who settled Plymouth. To ask, 
therefore, whether the Pilgrim character 
is to abide, is to ask whether the great 
qualities we have ascribed to the Pilgrim 
are to remain blended, united, living, 
though perhaps softened, in the lapse of 
years. 

I suppose we must admit it to be true 
that with men of thoughtful, instructed, 
conscientious natures, the authority of 
the statement of religious faith that satis- 
fied the Pilgrim, has been shaken in 
recent times chiefly by two causes : 

Isl. The researches of modern science 
have occasioned disbelief in the scripture 
narrative of the creation, and in the 
miraculous suspension of natural laws 
which the scripture records, and on which 
the claim of Christianity was largely 
rested in their day. 

3d. The modern knowledge of the phy- 
sical frame of man seems to establish the 
existence of physical causes for what our 
fathers were wont to consider purely 
spiritual manifestations, and so to make 
it seem more likely that the soul depends 
for its own existence and capacity for 



action upon tbe continued existence of 
the body. 

The religious faith of mankind, de- 
clared in different periods, always makes 
use of the framework, the setting, the im 
agery, the illustration, which is furnished 
by the accepted scientific knowledge of 
the time when it is uttered. Certainly to 
this the teaching of our Bible, both in tlie 
Old Testament and in the New, is no ex- 
ception. These beliefs, taught from very 
imperfect scientilic information, seem to 
be inseparably and inextricably blended 
with the moral and religious truths which 
they have been u^ed to illustrate, and to 
render conceivable. At every forward 
step of science, as she makes some new 
revelation to her students, she seems to 
overthrow the religion of which she has 
been the handmaid. So every great dis- 
coverer in science, from Galileo to Dar- 
win, from the discovery of gravitation 
and the slow geologic processes of the 
planting of the coal and the formation of 
he rocks to the discovery of the cvolu 
tion and kindred of all animate nature, 
appears to the teacher of the accepted re- 
ligion of the time as a skeptic if not as an 
infidel. No astonishment could exceed 
tiiat of John Robinson if lie could hear 
the scientific illustrations by which the 
most conservative and orthodox of his 
Calvinist successors undertake to make 
plain the counsel of God to a congrega- 
tion of most obedient and docile disciples 
to-day. So every period of scientific pro- 
gress seems to a superficial observer to be 
a period of religious and spiritual retro- 
gression. 

Does the faith that supported the Pil- 
grims, the faith in a personal immortality, 
in a conscious and benevolent Creator of 
tbe world who watches its affairs with a 
personal intelligence, and directs them 
with a loving purpose, as a father guideth 
his children, abide unimpaired as an in 
fluence in the government of States and 
of personal conduct to-day ? This is the 
theme of all themes, the question of all 
questions. It cannot be passed by on any 
solemn public occasion which is devoted 
to the memory of the Pilgrims. I think, 
speaking for myself, that when the new 
law which science has shown to us be- 
comes clear, not only to the genius which 
lias first perceived it, but to the common 
apprehension of mankind, the eternal 
verities of a conscious and benevolent 
Creator, and a personal, human immor- 
tality reappear cleare- and stronger. 
Even the skepticism of modern thought 
will at least agree to this, that the faith 
in righteousness, the willingness of man 
kind to obey a law higher than their own 
desire, grows stronger from age to age. 



13 



It was never stronger than today. The 
belief in what has been called the power 
in this world that makes for righteous 
nesa is stronger than ever, even in the 
minds of men who reject a miraculous or 
a religious sanction of its commands. 
The faith in miracles may have abated. 
The miracle may have been consigned to 
a place among the lower and grosser ar- 
guments which enforce obedience to the 
divine behest of duty. It is at best but 
milk for babes. But the faith drawn from 
the history of the constant law which pre- 
vails in the ordinary government of the 
universe has more than taken its place. 

The scientific inquirer makes his in- 
quiry from a love of truth; and the lover 
of truth will never be other than an obeyer 
of duty. 

Science traces the inperceptible steps 
by which inorganic matter reaches life, 
sensation, consciousness, will, conscience. 
She tells us, if we understand her, that in 
uncountetl, perhaps unimaginable ages 
the atoms of dead dust have stirred and 
quickened into vegetable life. The vege- 
table has become conscious of an animal 
nature. The animal acquires human in- 
telligence. But the voice of duty was full 
and clear in the morning of creation. The 
voice which Adam disobeyed, to which 
Abel and Abram listened, to which the 
Prophets and Pilgrims gave their lives 
was heard in fullest strengih when the 
human intelligence first became conscious 
of itself. Ever it overcomes and masters 
all the forces which science discovers or 
comprehends. 

Groping science lays bare the cells and 
brings under its microscope the minute 
powder in whose gray globules are held 
in store all thoughts and memories. But 
the will, lord of tho\ight, summoning 
memory from its cell with sovereign 
power, still dwells in its cloud, mysteri- 
ous, unapproachable, inaccessible. 

Science from age to age tells us more 
and more of the pliysical instrument by 
which the mind — the will — enforces its 
commands. It lays bare the mechanism, 
the secret spring by which the physical 
frame is set in motion. But it has added 
nothing to our knowledge of the mind 
itself, of the spiritual being which is con- 
scious of itself, which in its sublime free- 
dom chooses for itself the law which will 
obey, and even when it pays its homage 
to its Creator, or to His mandate of duty, 
I)«ys only a free and voluntary homage. 
If any man doubt that the faith in jus 
tice and righteousness, and their power 
as a practical force in the government of 
the world is increasing from ajre to age, 
whatever may be the sanction, let him 
rettd the lives of the men who for the past 



generation have been chosen by Great 
Britain for the government of her 250 
million subjects in the East. An almost 
unlimited power, gained without scruple 
used for generations as a provision for 
the children of her upper classes, has be- 
come steadily and surely an example of 
moderation, humanity and justice. There 
can be found few finer examples of the 
character of the great race from which we 
are so proud to be descended, than Lord 
Lawrence, or Lord Mayo, or Sir James 
Stephen. 

"The Sahibs do not understand or like 
us," said the Indian scholar to Mr. Monier 
Williams. " But they try to be just and 
do not Fear the face of man." 

The belief in miracles may have dimin- 
ished in strength. But reliijio\is faith is 
only a sanction of the moral law. The 
belief in a prevalence of that law as a 
controlling force in the world has not 
abated. It abides. The sanction of God's 
law by miracles has given place to a sanc- 
tion by His constant and eternal provi- 
dence. 

There is doubtless to-day great impa- 
tience of ecclesiastical authority, of creeds 
— the devices by which men seek to nar- 
row and limit the infinite truth of God, 
or to thrust their weak and fallible power 
between the soul and its Creator. But 
the faith that there came to this world, 
nineteen hundred years ago, a majestic 
Being, divinely commissioned, announc- 
ing a perfect rule, and Himself a perfect 
example, for human conduct, was never 
so powerful as at this moment. 

Is the principle of self-government in 
civil liberty as strong to-day with us as 
with the Fathers at Plymouth? John 
Cotton wrote to Lord Say in 1636: 

" Democracy I do not conceive that 
ever God did ordain as a fit government, 
either in Church or commonwealth. If 
the people be Governors, who shall be 
governed ? ' ' 

John Cotton's question is the great 
question of all history and of all destiny. 
The American answer to it is that if the 
people be the governors, the people shall 
be the governed. The human will volun- 
tarily and in freedom subjecting itself to 
a law higher than its own desire, is the 
sublimest thing in the universe, except 
its Creator. We have 45 sovereign States 
united in an imperial Republic, each one 
of which has written in its constitution 
that those things which are forbidden by 
the moral law and the law of justice shall 
not be enacted in the government of the 
State by any human authority or accom- 
plished by any human desire. They have 
created a mechanism perfect as the lot of 
humanity will admit for securing ttits re- 



14 



straint. Every generation has had and 
will have its own temptations, and has 
committed and will commit its own 
offences. But you will all agree with me 
that, not only the love of liburty but the 
strength of those constitutional restraints 
on the present desires of an impatient 
people grows stronger from generadon to 
generation and from age to age. I think 
our generation understands better than it 
was ever understood before that there is 
something far more than the love of free- 
dom, something far liigher than freedom 
itself, essential to a great State or to a 
great soul. Freedom is but the removal 
of obstacles. Freedom may be for the 
savage as for the Christian, forthehyeua 
as for the dove. When the fetlcr has 
been stricken from the limbs, when the 
caged or chained eagle soars into the 
sky, the time has come for labor, for 
discipline, for obedience. The freest 
people must submit to the severest and 
most strenuous sense of obligation, if it 
would lift itself to its own ideals. It 
must listen to a voice of higher author- 
ity than its own. The voice of the | 
people is not the voice of God. That i 
sentiment is alike false and impious. ! 

The principles of the American con- 
stitutions pervade the entire continent. 
As the child who goes out, poor and ob- 
scure from his birthplace to seek his 
fortune, comes back again successful and 
honored and strong to enrich the par- 
ental dwelling, so the principles of civil 
liberty in constitutional restraints which 
have possessed the American continent 
from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, have 
crossed the Atlantic again to possess the 
countries of their origin. England is 
almost a Republic in everything but 
name. France, after two failures, has 
become a permanent member of the 
family of free states, while in Southern 
and Oriental seas where the adventurous 
ships of our fathers, long after the 
American Constitution was framed, found 
nothing but barbarism and savagery, the 
great Australasian commonwealths are 
rising in splendor and in glory to take, 
at no distant day, a place perhaps fore- 
most in the family of self-governing na- 
tions. There is to-day no monarchy on 
American soil, unless we except the 
loose hanging power still retained by^her 
Majesty Queen Victoria over the British 
possessions on the north. 

If there be one thing more than another 
which is the settled purpose of intelligent 
and educated men and women who are, 
are to be, and ought to be the governing 
forces in all Christian nations, it is that 
the relation of man to his Creator shall 
be a question for the individual soul, and 



shall not be used as an instrument by any 
human power or authority. Our Fathers 
dreaded the power of theCatholic Church. 
But I think we are quite apt to forget 
that the "fury of the Bishops" from 
which John Milton says they fled, was 
the fury of Protestant Bishops. Reli- 
gious intolerance was the error and crime 
of past ages, universal but with few excep- 
tions, aud belonged to all churches alike. 
The witchcraft delusion prevailed in 
Protestant England and in Puritan Mass- 
achusetts, as well as among the Catholic 
nations of the continent. It was a Prot- 
estant monarch by whose orders the body 
of Oliver Cromwell was disinterred from 
its resting-place in Westminster Abbey, 
and the head — nobler and more august 
than any in the long line of English 
sovereigns since the day of Alfred — was 
exposed to public indignity on Temple 
Bar. Today Catholic Prance is as toler- 
ant as Protestant Massachusetts. Cath- 
olic Italy has thrown off the temporal 
power of the Papacy. There has been no 
nobler tribute in recent years to the mem- 
ory of the Pilgrim, and to civil and re- 
ligious freedom than that uttered in Ply- 
mouth ten years ago by a Catholic poet. I 
know of no more eloquent and stirring 
statement anywhere of a lofty American 
patriotism than that by Father Conaty, 
an Irish Catholic priest in my own cit}' 
of Worcester, when the portrait of our 
Irish hero, Sergeant Plunkett, was hung 
on the walls of Mechanics' Hall. 

In Massachusetts alone at least 56 per 
cent of her people are of foreign parent- 
age Probably 30 per cent of her people 
are of the Catholic faith. They came 
here, most of them, driven by an extreme 
)>overty from homes where for centuries 
they had been the victims of an almost 
intolerable oppression. They have grave 
faults, which it is not part of a true 
friendship or a true respect to attempt to 
bide or to gloss over. But I hold it one 
of the most remarkable and one of the 
most encouraging facts in our history 
tiiat this great stream which has poured 
into our State within the memory of liv- 
ing men wlio are not yet old has changed 
so little the character of Massachusetts 
and has had, on the whole, so favorable 
an influence upon her history and causes 
so little reasonable apprehension for the 
future. Massachusetts has educated the 
foreigner. She is making an American 
of him. She is surely, and not very 
slowly, when we consider the great peri- 
ods that constitute the life of a State, im- 
IDressing upon him what is best of the 
Pilgrim and the Puritan quality and the 
Pilgrim and the Puritan conception of a 
State. I look with an unquestioning hope 



15 



upon the future of Massachusetts. Noth- 
ing can stay her in her great career, un- 
less evil and low ambition shall stir up 
strife where there should be peace, hatred 
where there should be sympathy, and the 
conflict of religious sect and creed where 
there should be nothing but common 
Christian faith and common Christian 
love. 

There is a story of an Irish traveler 
who touched his hat to the statue of 
Jupiter in Rome. He said in explanation 
that he was afraid the old fellow might 
come into power again. The old Giants 
Pope and Pagan had become harmless in 
their caverns so long ago as the time 
when Bunyan's Pilgrim passed by on his 
way to the holy city. They are no more 
dangerous now. Timorous and Mistrust, 
Mr. Ready-to-halt and 3Ir. Feeble-mind 
may turn pale and their knees may trem- 
ble with dread of these ancient spectres. 
They may hide themselves in cavei'ns of 
their own to take counsel for mutual pro- 
tection. They cannot frighten the Amer- 
ican people. Still less will the sons of 
the Pilgrims be disturbed. We do not 
meet tyranny or bigotry or despotism or 
priestcraft with weapons like theirs. We 
have learned other lessons from the Pil- 
grim Fathers. Leave liberty to encounter 
despotism. Leave freedom to deal with 
slavery. Leave tolerance to meet intol- 
erance. Set the eagle to deal with the 
bat. Let in upon the marsh and upon the 
swamp the pure air and the fresh breeze. 
Open the windows into the cold dungeon 
and dark cellar and let In the sun's light 
and the sun's warmth. 

The Pilgrims were Englishmen. Their 
children are, in the essentials of national 
character, Englishmen still. We have a 
great admixture of other races. But it is 
anadmixture chiefly from those North- 
ern races of which England herself was 
composed. In spite of past conflicts and 
present rivalry England is the nation 
closest to us in affection and sympathy. 
The English language is ours. English 
literature is perhaps more familiar to the 
bulk of our people than to Englishmen 
themselves. The English Bible is still 
our standard of speech, our inspiration, 
our rule of faith and practice. We 
look to English authority in the admin- 
istration of our system of law and equity. 
English aptness for command, habit of 
success, indomitable courage, unconquer- 
able perseverance have been, are, and are 
to remain the American quality. The men 
of other blood who come here acquire 
and are penetrated with the English, or 
perhaps without boasting or van ty we 
may say, the American spirit. The great 
bulk of our people are of English blood. 



But by the spirit, which has its own pad- 
igree, its own ancestry, its own law 
of descent and of inheritance, we are 
English even more than by any lie of 
physical kinship, li is of this pedigree 
of the spirit, governed by forces of which 
science lias as yet given us no account that 
we are taking account to-day. It is by 
virtue of its laws tliat John Winthrop 
counts George Washington among his 
posterity. James Otis transmits his 
quality to Charles Sumner. Emerson 
may well be reckoned the spiritual child 
of Bradford; Channing the spiritual 
child of John Robinson; and Miles Stand- 
ish the progenitor of Grant. The great- 
hearted Hebrew prophet has many a de- 
scendant among the great-hearted Puri- 
tans. In this genealogy the men of 
Thermop3rlge are no aliens to the men of 
Bunker Ilill. When the boy who went 
out from a New England dwelling to meet 
death at Gettysburg or Antietam with no 
motive but tlie love of country and the 
sense of duty, shall meet, where he is 
gone, the men who fought the livelong 
day with Wellington or obeyed Nelson's 
immortal signal, he shall 

"Claim kindred there, and have the claim 

allowed." 

What I said just now was written more 
than ten days ago. Let it stand. Let it 
stand. It is well that these two great na- 
tions should know something of each other 
that they don't get from their metropolitan 
press whether in London or in New York. 
Each of them should know that if it enter 
into a quarrel with the other it is to be a 
contest with that people on the face of 
the earth which is most like to itself. The 
quarrel will be maintained on both sides 
until Anglo-Saxon, until English, until 
American endurance is exhausted. For 
that reason, if for no other, such a conflict 
should never begin. 

This whole thing is very simple. We 
cannot permit any weak power on this 
continent to be despoiled of its territory, 
or to be crowded out of its rights, by 
any strong power anywhere. England 
would not permit us to do that to Belgium 
or to Denmark. On the other hand, we 
have no title to interfere with the estab- 
lished boundaries of English territory, 
whether we like them or do not like them. 
All between those two limits is subject 
for discussion and for arbitration; sub- 
ject for that international arbitration 
which a delegation of English members 
of Parliamentcame to Boston a few years 
atro to impress \ipon us, snying that in 
their desire for its establishment they rep- 
resented llie opinions of a large majority 
of the English House of Commons. 

The settlement of pending differences 



16 



upon these principles will be compelled 
by the business men and the religious sen- 
timent of these two nations, influences 
always irresistible when they are united 
and when they are brought to bear upon 
large matters of national and interna- 
tional import. 

But you have not gathered here for phil- 
osophical, or political, or historical disqui- 
sition. This day is for the expression of 
filial love. The thoughts which are never 
strangers to the bosoms of the sons and 
daughters of the Pilgrims are to be stim- 
ulated and intensified under the operation 
of that mysterious law by which in a 
large assembly, or when a whole people 
unite in a common observance, the emo- 
tion in each individual heart is increased 
and multiplied by the emotion of every 
other. This is a larger Thanksgiving 
Day. To-day the children of the Pilgrims, 
wherever on the continent or on the face 
of the earth they dwell, are thinking of 
their Fathers. They are thinking of the 
holy men, of the sweet and comely ma- 
trons, of the brave youths and beautiful 
maidens to whom this coast and these 
forest glades were familiar in the infancy 
of Plymouth. Their hearts are full of the 
lofty tragedy and lofty triumph. We 
think of the death of Carver, of Dorothy 
Bradford, of the sweet Rose Standish, as 
if they had happened in our own house- 
holds; as if our Mothers had told us the 
story of some other children who had 
died under our Father's roof before we 
could i-emember. It is as real as if it had 
happened yesterday. It shall be as real 
as if it happened yesterday until time 
shall be no more. What presence looks 
over the Bay to day more living than the 
warrior figure of Miles Standish ? What 
household memory is dearer to us than 
that of John Carver, of whom it has been 
so well said: "The column of smoke 
from the volley fired at his grave was his 
only monument." 

There is no tragedy in all fiction, not 
the death of Hector, not the sorrow of 
CEdipus, not the guilt of Macbeth, not 
the wounded heart of Lear, like this true 
and simple story. The Atlantic between 
these men and women and their homes 
in beautiful England, the horrors of the 
stormy passage, the landing in December, 
the terrible suffering of the first winter, 
but six or seven men able to tend the sick 
or bury the dead, when the spring came 
seveti times as many graves as dwellings, 
strong men staggering at their work at 
noonday by reason of fainting for want 
of food, the challenge of the savage, the 
hO'^^ling of the wild beast, and yet there 
is nothing in it of sorrow, nothing in it 
except lofty triumph. The Pilgrims had 



no regrets. There is no gloom in their fiH- 
nals. The tragedies of history, ia.fte'r aU, 
are its richest blessings and most pvecioUs 
memories. We mourn for those whom 
the fate of war has bereaved of their kin- 
dred, or whose life has been made a bur- 
den by the loss of health or limb. Yet 
would the mother have her son back 
again at the price of having the brave 
deed undone? Would the widow clasp 
her husband's form a^ain, if she could 
buy him back at the pnce of striking his 
name from the list of heroes ? Does the 
crippled and wounded veteran wish he 
had stayed at home, if in that Way he 
could get back his health or his linlb? 

Bradford's history is a brave andeheer- 
ful story. Think, too, of this story of 
the founding of a great nation With no 
fable in it. The Pilgrims were followed 
by a generation incapable of boaisting, 
and quite otherwise occupied. One hun- 
dred and fifty years passed before any- 
body celebrated anything they had done. 
There is the loving tribute of friendship. 
But the praise was iot God. 

There is surely, as I said in the begin- 
ning, no statelier or loftier presence in 
human history than the Pilgrims Of 
Plymouth. What belongs to & high 
behavior, to a simple, severe but delicate 
laste in dress, in architecture, in hotise- 
furnishing, in the decoration and adorn- 
ment of daily life, they discerned with 
unerring taste. The satire of Hudibras, 
the caricature of Hogarth, the scortt of 
the courtier, the pride of the rtiffling 
gallant, have exhausted themselves to 
ridicule the figure of the Fathers of New 
England, and their contemporaries who 
sat in council with Cromwell or marched 
to victory under his banner. But these 
scoffers have had their day. The dfess 
of the cavalier has now been remitted to 
the butler or the footman. The fashion- 
able lovelocks ornament the head of the 
fiddler or the buffoon. But the dress 
of the Puritan is now the dress of all 
gentlemen in Europe. The architects of 
our dwellings are studyitig the secret of 
his simple and noble architecture. The 
serious dignity of demeanor Which 
marked the intercourse of Bradford and 
Brewster is a pattern for the imitation 
of any Ambassador, though he represeftl 
seventy million freemen at wrhatever 
court, or before whatever Sovereign he 
may stand. Can you find anywhere kfHaer 
type of a noble and accomplished 
sreutleman than William Bradford ? 
You may search Europe fot his peer. 
Into what stalely eloquence he rises when 
he speaks of the higher thihgS 6f the 
spirit, and the grave cbtirerhs 6f theCom- 
hiouwealth. What an atJCompllAhed 



scholar he was. Look at his haiulwrit- 
ing, a matter by which you can ofllimus 
disceru the genllemau as you can iu the 
step, or tone of the voice, or carriage of 
the person, or glance of the eye. When 
Bradford, and Brewster, and Carver, and 
liobinsou, and Miles Slandish, and Rich- 
ard Warren, and Edward Winslow, and 
Samuel Fuller were taking counsel to- 
tfelber in Leydeu, they could have set a 
pattern of stalely dignity to any society 
on earth. Brewster had a library of two 
hundred and seventy live volumes. His 
principal estate consisted of sixty four 
volumes in the learned languages. What 
noble and lofty and exquisite sentences 
are founil iu the writings of Robinson. 
The passage iu one ot his letters to the 
little exiled flock from whom he was 
separated, — " Iu a battle it is not looked 
for but that divers should die," is in the 
highest strain of Paul. " God forbid that 
I should need to exhort you to peace, 
which is the bond of perfection, ami by 
which all good is tied together, and with- 
out which it is scattered. Have peace 
unto God first, by faith in His promise, 
good conscience kept iu all things, and 
oft renewed by repentance ; and so one 
with another for His sake who is, though 
three, one ; and for Christ's sake, who is 
one, and as you are called by one spirit to 
one hope." Is not this the very spirit of 
John the Beloved Disciple? Is not this 
the very spirit of Grace, Mercy and 
Peace ? I do not find the battle and the 
march and the gaudium certaminis any- 
where in our Pilgrim. His longing was 
ever for peace. 

Lcyden street in Plymouth, with its 
cluster of seven humble dwellings, wit- 
nessed a high behavior to which there 
could not be found a parallel in any court 
in Europe. There was no employment 
so homely or menial that it could debase 
the simple dignity of these men, a dignity 
born of daily spiritual communion with 
heavenly contemplations, of constant 
meditating on the things which concern 
eternal life, and the things which con- 
cern the foundation of empire. It was 
like an encampment of a company of 
crusaders on their journey to the Holy 
City, where every companion was a 
prince or a noble. DeRassiere describes 
the little procession as it marched to wor- 
ship God on Sunday morning summoned 
by the beat of the drum. Was there ever a 
statelier ceremonial at an emperor's coro- 
nation? There can be no better touch- 
stone of the genuineness and sincerity of 
a lofty religious faith than its creation of 
a lofty behavior, such as comports with 
daily meditation and conversation on 
celestial and eternal interests. 



This is the one stoty to which for us, 
or for our children, nothing in human 
annals may he cited for parallel or com- 
parison, save the story of Bethlehem, 
rhere is none other told iu Heaven or 
among men like the story ot the Pilgrim. 
Upon this rock is founded our house. 
Let the rains de-ceud, and the floods 
come, and the winds blow and beat upon 
that house, it shall not fall. The saying 
of our Prophet — our Daniel — is fulfilled. 
The sous of the Pilgrim have crossed the 
Mississippi and possess the shores of the 
Pacific. The tree our Fathers set cover- 
ed at first a little space by the seaside. It 
has planted its banyan branches in the 
ground. It has spread along the lakes. 
It has girdled the Gulf. It has spanned 
the Mississippi. It has covered the 
prairie and the plain. The sweep of its 
lof ly arches rises over the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and the Cascades, and the Nevada.H. 
Its hardy growth shelters the frozen 
region of the far Northwest. Its boughs 
hang over the Pacific. And in good time 
— in good time — it will send its roots be- 
neath the waves and receive under its 
vast canopy the islands of the sea. 

"BraDchiugr so broad and long, that iu the 
ground 

The bended twiga take root, and daughters 
grow 

About the mother tree, a pillared shade 

High overarched, and echoing walks be- 
tween." 

Wherever the son of the Pilgrim goes, 
he will carry with him what the Pil- 
grim brought from Leyden— the love 
of liberty, reverence for law, trust in 
God — a living God — belief in a per- 
sonal immortality, the voice of con- 
science in the soul, a heart open to the 
new truth which ever breaketh fi-om 
the bosom of the Word. His inherited 
instinct for the building of States will 
be as sure as that of the bee for building 
her cell or the eagle his nest. 

The gentle spirit of Bradford, the stern 
courage of Standish, the lofty faith of 
Brewster, mellowed and broadened as the 
centuries come and go, shall be his. It 
may be that the Power that was with his 
Fathers will not doom him to the severe 
discipline and the stern trial that was 
theirs. We may hope for him the bless- 
ings of existence to which Webster sum- 
moned him — of "life in pleasant lands, in 
verdant fields, and under healthful skies. 
He may hope for the enjoyment of the 
great inheritance wo transmit to him. the 
blessings of good government and re- 
ligious liberty, the treasures of science, 
the delights of learning, the transcendent 
sweets of domestic life," shared with 
kindred and parents and children. But 
he must enjoy and hold these things as 



18 



ready to put with them at the summons 
of Him who bestowed them. They are 
never to be bought or to be held at the 
sacrifice of freedom, of truth, or of duty. 

Whatever temptation come to him, let 
the memory of tbe nieu who landed here 
rise in his soul, to be his shield and 
safety. 

Whenever in coming centuries men 
govern themselves in freedom, let him 
still be found foremost, taking the honest 
and the brave part. 

If cowardice dissuade him from the 
peril and sacrifice, without which noth- 
ing can be gained in the great crises of 
National life, lei him auswer: I am of the 
blood of them who crossed the ocean in 
the Mayflower and encountered the wil- 
derness and the savage in the winter of 
1620. 

If luxury and ease come with their se- 
ductive whisper, he will reply: I am de- 
scended from thelittlecompany of whom 
more than half died before spring, and of 
wliom none went bacjs to England. 

Bigotry and superstition will in vain 
utter their hoarse and discordant counsel 
to him who is of God's free people. 

Let him never forget his ancestry. 

In his halls is hung 

Armory ot the iuviiicible Knights ot old. 
In everything he is sprung 

Of earth's llrst blood, hath titles manifold. 

If the hearts of other men fail them, 



he will still turn for inspiration to the 
rock where Aldeu landed, to the walls 
where Brewster preached, to the hill 
where Bradford lies buried. 

Let this day forevermore bo devoted to 
filial alfection. Let it be given to tlie ut- 
terance of children's love. The beauti- 
ful shadows of the Pilgrim Father and 
the Pilgrim Mother hover over us now. 
In that spiritual presence it cannot be that 
cur hearts sliall be cold or that our 
thoughts should be unworthy of our 
high lineage. Let every return of the 
Pilgrim anniversary witness a new con 
secratiou of his children to the Pil- 
grim's cause in the Pilgrim's spirit. 
If it shall be our fortune to enjoy 
tlie blessings of civiliaalion, of order, of 
retinement, of happy homes, of wealth, 
of letters, of art, of the transcendent 
sweets of domestic life, of safety, of good 
fame, of honor, let us enjoy them, faith- 
ful to the God who has given them and 
to tlie ancestors whom he vouchsafed to 
make His instruments to win them. Not 
unto us; not unto us, but unto Him and 
to them be the praise. I'ut if we are 
called on in His Providence to give up all 
these, let us remember that it is not for 
these things that human life on this earth 
is given. Let us slill remember the Pil- 
grim's life, and the Pilgrim's lesson. 
Above all. Liberty! Above all. Faith ! 
Above all. Duty 1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




